Many websites available on the internet may ask visitors to register or otherwise establish an account in order to access some or all of the content or services offered by the websites. As a given user visits a variety of different sites, he or she may be asked to register at numerous different sites. If the user wishes to register under his or her own name, the user may find that a preferred name is already taken at one or more given sites. Thus, a user named “John Doe” may have to register under “John Doe1” at one site, under “John Doe11” at another site, under “J_Doe” at a third site, and so on. These different user names may prove burdensome for users to remember, and may be forgotten over time. Accordingly, some users may choose to maintain a written or recorded list of the usernames under which they are registered at different websites.
Another complication is that different websites may implement different password policies, in terms of overall length, complexity, and alphanumeric composition. Thus, if a user has a favorite password, this favorite password may be acceptable to some websites, but not acceptable to others. Thus, the user may have to create and remember a variety of different passwords to comply with password polices in effect at different sites. Once again, these different passwords may prove difficult to remember, and users may record them to avoid relying entirely on memory.
Users may also consider the content or subject matter of a given website when choosing a user name under which to register. For a variety of reasons, the users may wish to register under a relatively anonymous user name. Thus, John Doe, from the example above, may wish to sign on to a discussion forum under the name “User A” to preserve his privacy. Because these anonymous user names may also be difficult to remember over time, users may either forget their anonymous user names, or choose to record them for later reference.